Regardless of its word count, genre or subject matter, a short book adheres to the same three-act structure as a full-length book. In fiction works, the sequence of events or escalation of suspense is often described as 1. chase the hero up a tree, 2. throw rocks at the tree and 3. set the tree on fire. In a nonfiction book, such as an instructional guide, the first third of the text introduces the terms, tools and the amount of time a user needs to perform a task; the second third provides him with exercises and simple projects to master the rudimentary skills; and the final third presents more challenging tasks that allow the reader to apply what he has learned.
For the purpose of this article, let's assume the short book you're going to develop and write will be a maximum of 40 double-spaced pages. If you use a 12 point Times New Roman font on a 300-word page with 1-inch margins on all side, you will get a 12,000-word manuscript.
Decide whether you want to write fiction or nonfiction, identify a subject that you feel could comfortably fill 40 pages. For a first book, it's best to start by writing about something you know (i.e., the summers you spent with your grandparents, how to make children's clothes, or ways to stretch a paycheck in tough economic times).
What makes a book successful is how well the subject matter resonates with its target demographic. If you're writing a romantic novella, it's not likely that men are going to rush to the bookstores to buy it. Nor is a how-to book on what qualities to look for in a butler, cook and chauffeur going to appeal to lower-income households that are struggling to pay their monthly bills.
Once you have defined what kind of book you want to write, it's important to research what is already out there and how the content has been presented to target readers. If you're going to write a short romance, you need to read short romantic fiction to familiarize yourself with the structure, the themes and the grade-level of the language. If you're writing a short how-to book on how to grow your own herbs, you need to research how many herb books have been written and whether they are slanted toward men, women, youth or retirees.
When you are done with the research, make a list of the ways your book idea is similar to its competitors, different from its competitors and what the takeaway value will be for your defined readership.
Just as you wouldn't start out on a cross-country road trip without a map, it can be hazardous if you try to start your book without knowing where to begin, where to finish and what kind of interesting stops to make along the way. The first step for a fiction book is to decide on the companions who will be along for the ride. At a minimum, this will be a protagonist and an antagonist who want the same thing and will do anything to keep their opponent from getting it. The second thing is to decide where and when this conflict takes place. Because you're writing a short book instead of a novel, it's best to minimize the number of settings and have the action unfold over a period of days or weeks instead of years. The third thing is the task of peopling the plot with helpmates for both sides; i.e., the supportive friends and the evil accomplices. Last but not least is how you plan to resolve the conflict in a way that will be plausible and satisfactory to your audience. To build your working outline, refer to the three-act structure in Section 1 and make brief notes on what happens in each act to set up the conflict, throw in complications, increase the risks and move toward a resolution.
For a nonfiction short book, the first step is to identify what your target readers already know. If, for instance, they're brand new to building things with their hands, you'll need to explain what a hammer is, show them a picture of a hammer and show how it's used. You can start the first third of your book with a more complex approach if your target reader already knows the basics. As you fill out the three-act outline for your nonfiction material, your challenge is to make each project a little harder than the one that preceded it. At this time, you also need to decide whether the book will be straight text or accompanied by drawings or photographs to supplement the content.
If you're serious about writing a book, you need to be willing to make the commitment to work on it as often as you can. A lot of new writers are daunted by the writing process because they mistakenly believe that they have to free up huge chunks of uninterrupted time. Just as many never get past their first sentence because they mistakenly believe they have to find the most perfect phrase they can. By agonizing so much about perfection and re-editing every single word, they don't make progress.
If you apply a simple formula, you could have your short book written in less time than you imagine. The first step is to decide how much output you can reasonably commit to each day. Output is different from time because even though you might commit to two hours of writing per day, you could still end up sitting in front of your monitor for one hour and 55 minutes and only manage to type a single word. If, however, you commit to an output quota of one page per day, it doesn't matter if you write it in half an hour or take all evening. If you type only one page a day for the next 40 days –voila–you'll have finished your first draft in less than two months.
The rules of this formula are very simple. Do not do any editing during this time. Simply write, write, write. You can't skip any days of writing just because it's the weekend or a holiday or the weather's nice and you'd rather go to the beach. If you have a burst of enthusiasm and knock off seven pages in a single day, this is not an excuse to then do nothing for the next week. Come the following day, you still have to produce the minimum quota of a single, typed page. The good news, though, is that you're now actually ahead of schedule and will finish your book in less than the 40 days you budgeted.